COLOURING OUTSIDE THE LINES PART II - LESSONS

con't from Learning ...

But, then the really stupid news?  The day the insurance company declares my car totaled, is the day I must return the rental.  Are they kidding me???  Is a new car going to magically appear?  Especially during this historic period in time (world stoppage) where a new car has to be ordered months in advance and because of that, no one is giving up the car they have.  Seriously???  Turn in the rental?  I am a one-car family.  What kind of nonsense will insurance companies think of next?  And, what in the heck am I going to do?

                                     * * *

But I digress ... again ... 

Lady Luck is on my side and my local Toyota dealer has a slightly used end-of-lease Prius-C someone had turned in that very day. Comparable in mileage to my now-defunct slightly-higher-better-model, but, the car has no guts, no backup camera, no cruise control.  It was just a no-no, no-go kinda car.  

I keep in touch with the Product Specialist who handled my purchase of the Prius.  Wonders of wonders, one day, months later,  he tells me about an even-slightly newer one-up model Corolla, WITH almost everything my heart desires.  I could live without the remote start I love having, especially in winter.  Oh well, at least that's one thing I can have installed later, you know, like when I win the lottery. 

Great car, decent price and decent trade-in on the Prius.  Colour could have been different but then I wouldn’t blend in with my neighbours. 

 It does have quite a few bells and whistles the old one didn’t have, like dynamic cruise control, which is kind of neat.  And then there's the early warning system.  Quite cool and annoying at the same time.  Also, pretty bossy.  Apparently, when you colour outside the lines too many times, it tells you to...                                   

                              TAKE A BREAK

                     

... accompanied by the bell-like tinkle of a little ringadingdingie.

Funny as hell but as I mentioned, annoying.  The first time it comes on, I have to endure seeing it until I turn the car off.  The second time I make the supreme effort to figure out how to get rid of it.  Phew!!

                                     * * *

 How many ways are there to colour   outside the lines, you ask?  Let me   count the ways ... 

Picture this – a beautiful sunny, spring afternoon, someone has just mowed their lawn for the first time.  The scent floats past your open window, tickling your nose, while you’re out driving along those curvy little streets.

Then you see all the people walking on the side of the road ' cause there's no sidewalks out in the country.'   

                                                           

Country folk usually have at least one dog with them, most often, two or more and I wonder how much their food and vet bills are.

Sometimes the dogs are leashed, occasionally not, or on those really long leashes, which enable 4-leggeds to lunge at kamikaze squirrels, who watch disdainfully from the safe zone, just outside the leashes’ reach.  How those silly critters love to play chicken with passing cars and neighbourhood guard dogs. 

And what about those hands-free leashes, with the human's face stuck in their cell phone?   Just gotta love those ones.  The 4-legged may be getting their exercise but no attention.  They could eat a dead elephant before their person may notice.

Then, there are the people on bikes, pedaling like mad, who make great play-things for all the dogs who hid in the shrubbery.  When the time is exactly right, they race out of their hiding spots (so much fun!), barking with gusto, causing the cyclists to swerve all over the road using evasive maneuvers.  Sometimes though, they fall ass-over-tea kettle in the process.

  

 What really amazes me is the way they spring back to their feet in what seems like mere seconds, after they get their breath back.  Reminds me of a jack-in-the-box.  It must be all that healthy living!

And so, in order to circumvent mayhem, you must go over the lines to miss all the miscreants, which means sometimes you just have to colour outside the lines.  On a fine, bright spring afternoon, that little ringadingdingie may sound frequently.  And, I’m guessing when that happens one too many times, you just gotta take a break, whether you actually need one or not. 

                                      ***

 Sometimes I gotta wonder if   my car is smarter than I am?   I think we've all heard about   the amazing autonomous   vehicle (AV) (self-driving technology) which is in the works?   Kinda scary, to me, anyway.  What does this remind you of?  I see a toaster.  I wonder if I'll live long enough to see AVs as an every- day kinda thing, you know, like Corollas?  

I start to wonder some more - it's now mid-2023, almost a quarter of the way into this 21st century.  Can we actually buy a self-driving vehicle?  Checking online I find lots of ads and decide to go to the biggest marketplace (in the world?) and sure enough find lots of ads for self-driving vehicles but so far have only seen books available for them but no actual cars.  Curious.  

 This ad is of particular interest   to me as it cost almost as much as a used car.  I wonder if the pages are gilded in gold-leaf?

The 2021-2026 World Outlook for Self-Driving Cars by Prof Philip M. Parker Ph.D. | Feb 13, 2020 Paperback $995.00 

90 days FREE Blamazon. Terms apply.  Ships to Canada 

Then I start thinking about how much this world has changed since I was a kid.  Back then, my very young world was filled with playing hide n' seek with the five french kids next door, what was for supper and watching the last episode of Pollyanna on The Wonderful World of Disney on TV (no VCRs back then).  I hide in the corner of the hall (I'd been sent to bed early because of some stunt I pulled that day).  I can’t remember anymore what I did back then but it must have been serious to invoke the wrath of Mom!

P.S.  I think my parents knew I was there, in the hallway ... trying to be invisible.  So much innocence.  I miss it - innocence.  Is there any such thing, anymore?  

Forest Gump said, “life is like a box of chocolates”,   

    

to which I add my 2₵, “and learning how to colour outside the lines.”

 

COLOURING OUTSIDE THE LINES - Learning

 

Last week, the bullet got bit and I got a new car.  Okay, a new-to-me new car. 

My saga begins about 6 months ago, in our biggest-in-the-region city,  Barrie, population 155,000.  That’s pretty big when the town you live in is 25,000 and believe me, the traffic reflects the pop. 

I love where I live now, finally settling here, in the Beach, 5 years ago.  I also decided it was a great time to retire.  Best decision I made in a long time.  And even better, I discovered that condo living suits me just fine.  I’m loving it!  Someone else gets to do the lawn mowing, weed whacking, spider and bug spraying and the like.  Also, especially here in our northern clime, plowing the parking spots, shovelling the sidewalks and putting down the ‘don’t-slip-and-break-your-hip-stuff during what I call the off-season. 

But I digress ... 

I used to live near Barrie and know it fairly well.  I attended a small business networking group there and came to know quite a few of the other  members; what their businesses were about and where they are located.  Plot twist; I actually met a long-lost cousin of mine at the very first meeting I ever went to.  Amazing what a small world it can be. 

                                   * * *

Having discovered my passion, with a passion― photography ―  my Nikon camera is usually on my hip, literally (I use a side-sling), when I’m out and about and especially when I go jaunting.  Well, it got very annoying when I turned it on and it would freeze every time.  I had to take the battery out, put it back in and turn it on again to get it to work.  BIG sigh.  Luckily, I bought the extended warranty.  The only wrinkle was that I had to bring it to Harry’s in Barrie, so they could send it out to have it fixed. 

I decided that I just could not be without a camera at all and managed to find a small point & shoot – not a Nikon, on my local(ish) marketplace group.  It was economical and available and best of all, the seller agreed to meet me at Harry’s.  

Everything went off flawlessly, despite the world-wide insanity at the time.  And then everything went to hell in a hand cart, and I wished that I could have a mulligan.                                            

I missed my turn onto the road home and decided rather than turning around, to just continue on, taking Mapleview, a major east-west corridor in Barrie and one that had been under construction when I moved, in 2012 to the Town just a little bit south.  It has been under construction ever since and it’s 2022 now.  Gotta wonder if it’ll ever be finished.  It’s starting to remind me of the 401. 

 It's the tail end of the Fall-back   time-change week, a cloudy,   dampish kind of day.  Bunched   up at the light near the Crappy   Tire on Mapleview, we were all waiting impatiently for a rather long red light to change.  The Honda SUV in front of me moved quickly and so did I, wanting out of ‘city’ traffic and to get home. 

All of sudden and not sure why even to this day, but all of a sudden, the SUV stopped dead and then rocked back and forth a few times.  I desperately stomped on the brakes to no avail on the slickish road.   Ooops!!  Bumped into the bumper (they’re well named) and heaved a big sigh. 

Edging slowly and carefully into the inside lane, along with two vehicles in front of me, we made our way to the lane leading into the Honda dealership (handy for the one driving the car I nudged). 

 The three of us drivers got out to  confer - the minivan driver, a   man, who had been severely   jolted by the woman driving the SUV in front of me, Maren, and me.  It looked like my front end had taken the brunt of it, with the hood bunched up and the grill reminding me of a grinning, gap-toothed jack-o-lantern.                                                                                    

The woman, Maren, was shaken (but not stirred).  She had slammed into the guy in front of her pretty hard.  Her front end was smunched in and his back end didn’t look so good.  Maren’s back end, where I had barely tickled it, did not show any damage at all, maybe a scuff mark on the bumper and after a few minutes of getting things sorted out, the other two agreed that there was no reason for me to have to wait around.  I left promptly, just wanting to get back to what I consider my safe haven, especially during the past almost two years of government gaslighting.

Finally.  Home.  I sit down.  Hard, on the sofa.  The events of the afternoon start trickling their way through my grey matter.  HUGE sigh as the implication hits me - FIFTY years' worth of a perfect driving record wiped out in a few seconds, caused partly by me but more so by Maren, who, for some unknown-to-me reason had triggered the thruple.  I never did find out what happened.  No matter.  It was what it was.

 Next on the agenda was to   have my car fixed.  First,   though, was getting a rental   car locally.  One of the   things I learned about living   in The Beach is that there   is only one, count ‘em, one,   rental car place in the Bay   area and with the semi-annual event of time change week, getting a rental car, fast, is as rare as hen’s teeth.  

Chatting with the manager of the one-and-only car rental place, I had to ask why it took so long to get a rental.  He mentioned that the week following time changes are the busiest.  Wouldn’t ya know.  It has taken a week to get the rental, leave my car at the insurance company’s ‘preferred’ body shop, only to be told a week later that they, the insurance company, were totaling my car.  I was crushed.  I thought I’d be driving that car until I died.  

But, then the really stupid news?  The day the insurance company declares my car totaled, is the day I must return the rental.  Are they kidding me???  Is a new car going to magically appear?  Especially during this historic period in time (world stoppage) where a new car has to be ordered months in advance and because of that, no one is giving up the car they have.  Seriously???  Turn in the rental?  I am a one-car family.  What kind of nonsense will insurance companies think of next?  And, what in the heck am I going to do?

To be continued ...

TODAY

 

 

                                     Sun sand surf hot wind

Love in pale dry grains near shore

Young lust pure free, peace